7 Things To Do Before A House Move

Moving into a new home or house is an exciting adventure. However, a successful house move requires planning and completing numerous chores before the moving day. If you want to have a smooth, safe, and stress-free moving experience, you need to do everything right.

Overlooking a vital moving task can turn a house move into a nightmare. But this shouldn’t be the case. You can have a positive moving experience if you pay attention to these seven essential things and do them before a house move:

1. Pack Your Stuff Weeks Before The Move

Although you have your moving day set, you need to start preparing for the move weeks earlier. As early as possible, consider packing stuff you don’t use every day, like towels, filed documents, bed linen, and sports equipment.

Whether you’ve hired a moving company or have friends and family helping you with the move, packing your stuff early ensures that you save time on the moving day. It also keeps you from paying extra costs in moving companies due to time delays or straining relationships with relatives and friends by keeping them waiting.

2. Streamline Your House Insurance

Streamlining house insurance before moving to a new home is critical in ensuring you have coverage on moving day. Before a house move, ensure that the current insurance policy ceases the day after the move and the next one starts the day before.

Most insurance firms make transit insurance part of their policy to keep you and your belongings covered in a traffic collision or fire. If they don’t, ensure that you get standalone coverage from a moving insurer for safety and security.

If you don’t have house insurance, consider getting one before the move. You may only have a handful of valuable items but replacing them in case of an accident or burglary would undoubtedly cost much more than an insurance fee for a year.

3. Do Simple Maintenance

Before moving into a new home, the first thing you need to do is simple maintenance tasks. While it’s easy to assume that the previous homeowner left all appliances and systems in good shape, this isn’t always the case. Often, home sellers don’t undertake routine maintenance on homes as they rush to relocate.

Moving into a new home to find out that there are non-functional appliances or systems can be a huge inconvenience. Avoid this by doing simple maintenance in your new home before moving. Ideally, these tasks should involve:

• Vacuuming the coils behind or beneath the refrigerator.
  Cleaning the washer and dryer.
• Changing the HVAC filter.
• Cleaning evaporative coils in the air conditioning unit.
• Checking if every appliance and system is functioning

4. Acquaint Yourself With The New House

The other essential thing you need to do before making a house move is acquainting yourself with the new house. Visit the house and find out how everything works, especially the shutoff valves and the breaker box.

Knowing where these are located can save you the trouble of experiencing flooding, staying in an unlit home, or other minor disasters that could occur. Look out for plumbing leaks and spend about two hours monitoring changes in the water meter during the visit.

If the meter changes when no water is used, get a plumber to find the water leak.

5. Have A Professional Cleaner Clean The House

Before moving into your new house, hire professional cleaning services to clean it. While previous tenants clean most properties before moving out, houses remain empty for extended periods, exposing them to dirt.

Get a professional cleaning service specializing in end-of-lease cleaning to steam the carpets and clean the kitchen and bathrooms thoroughly before moving.

6. Change Your Address

Before moving to your new house, you need to change your physical address to ensure your letters reach you on time and without hitches. After the change, ensure that you inform essential entities and personal connections, such as friends, family, banks, credit card companies, insurance, and other service providers.

7. Get Connectivity And Utilities Set Up

Before moving to a new house, ensure that utilities and internet connections work well. You can avoid inconveniencing your first night in a new house by setting up electricity, gas, Wi-Fi, and any other utility you need before the moving day.

While utility companies allow for service transfers from one location to another depending on how far one is moving, there are situations where you’d have to cancel the service in one location before enlisting for it in another area.

Such set-ups may require appointments and could also take days to take effect. Initiating these processes weeks before the moving day allows service providers the time to set up utilities in your new house and keeps you from getting inconvenienced.

Final Thoughts

Moving to a new house requires proper planning and preparation to run smoothly. If you plan on moving to a new home soon, ensure that you do the seven things outlined above before moving to avoid getting inconvenienced.